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Tag Archive for robots

Do you really WANT these jobs?

December 6, 2014 Writing Comments Off on Do you really WANT these jobs?

 

Over the past few years, I’ve read a few online horror stories about working in the Amazon fulfillment centers.  About how body-breaking those picking jobs can be, how options are limited and the pay is not enough to help pay to fix the physical problems a job like that can generate.

So I’m torn.  These jobs sound wretched.  They sound like sheer torture.  I can easily see how you’d want to develop a mechanized/robotic system to make it cleaner, more efficient and move away from breaking people to get the job done.  Robots can do the kind of scut-work that will put a human in the hospital over time and the people are saved (yay people!)

But on the other hand, as hard and as painful as they may be, those ARE jobs.  They can provide for those people, those families.  So by saving the people, we are, with the same stroke, harming the people by taking away that opportunity.

In the sci-fi/cyberpunk that I write, I haven’t explored this specific human cost (yet), I utilize warehouses full of AI driven robots for some areas of the story, but this has got me thinking about the development of those warehouses, how they came to be as mechanized and what happened to all the people who used to work there.  I have some research to do here, and might have a new story or two to write.

I said FLYING cars, not DRIVING cars… Stupid Google…

February 8, 2013 Writing Comments Off on I said FLYING cars, not DRIVING cars… Stupid Google…

I have a problem.  I grew up in sunny California, where nobody walks if they can possibly drive and the roads are so, so very tidy.  So for me, the idea of a self driving car is perfectly reasonable.  Even on our worst traffic day, the roads in CA won’t kill you.  Other people might.    There are always the unhappy accidents where attentiveness and physics sit down together and decide to end your days.  By and large, however these are not the fault of road conditions (okay, there is that bridge over by Sacramento that freezes over, but that’s a bit fluke-y).  So for us, the idea of a car that can help reduce those accidents, that can help drop the number of fatalities due to things like texting, early morning rush hour handjobs, a rock in the windshield, this is going to be a good thing.  Because, for us, there is never ever a question as to whether or not road conditions are safe.

But in many many places in the US (and internationally) it’s a valid question.  Can a self-driving car be safe under more adverse conditions?  Can I hop into my little green Googlecar in the middle of a blizzard and arrive safely (and you know someone will, it’s a robot, if you own a self-driving car, you’re going to be one of those who have an unquestioning faith in technology, the kind of person who will drive into a lake because Apple Maps told you too).  Can I rely on my self-driving car to avoid tornadoes?  Can my self driving car compensate if the road floods?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/01/30/can-you-be-trusted-with-googles-driverless-car/

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